Break and Enter (20 page)

They pulled on their outerwear and left; then I locked up and said, “We’ve probably got time for a quickie before Robbie wakes up.”

“Race you.”

Early the next morning, we said goodbye to our stream and pointed the truck south. I spent the next three days playing catch-up in the paper chase, not that I ever really got totally caught up.

The office was closed on the Monday after New Year’s, and my weekly staff meeting was canceled. As a consequence, our next meeting was a full one. My phone rang five minutes after Gregg, David, and Janet had gone back to their offices. It was the desk sergeant downstairs.

“Captain,” he said, “there’s a Mr. and Mrs. Murchison here to see you.”

“Have someone bring them up,” I said.

A minute later, he called back to warn me that the woman was irate over our perceived lack of progress in solving her brother’s murder. While I waited, I gave the sheriff a quick call to tell him of their arrival. A female deputy ushered a middle-aged couple into my office, and I braced myself.

The man introduced himself as Howard Murchison and his wife as Doriana Murchison; I offered them a seat. He was fifty-something, fat, and balding. She was in the same age range and was clearly fighting a losing battle with the ravages of late middle-age. Virtually without preamble, Mrs. Murchison launched into a tirade. She apparently believed that the department was incompetent, that nobody was interested in solving this terrible crime, that nothing was being done, and on and on. I waited patiently until she at last ran down.

“Mrs. Murchison,” I said, “let me call the lieutenant and sergeant in charge of the investigation to my office, and they’ll be more than happy to give you a complete progress report.”

“Humph,” she said.

Ignoring her, I picked up the phone and dialed Janet. “Lieutenant Sanchez,” I said, “is Sergeant Johnson in the building?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good, because I want the two of you to come see me, and bring the Jordan file with you. His sister would like a progress report.”

Hanging up the phone, I said, “They’ll be here shortly.”

“You’re awfully young to be a captain,” Mr. Murchison said.

“I’m the youngest captain the department has ever had,” I said, “and before that I was the youngest lieutenant.”

“I guess that says something about your abilities,” he said.

“Including, no doubt, his ability to kiss ass,” his wife said.

“Now, Doriana,” he said, “that was uncalled for. I know the sheriff pretty well, and he has told me more than once that his higher-ranking people are where they are based solely on merit.”

“Humph.”

Evidently “humph” was her favorite word.

Janet and Carl appeared in my doorway, and I waved them in.

“Mr. and Mrs. Murchison,” I said, “this is Lieutenant Sanchez, and with her is Sergeant Johnson. They’ve been handling the case.”

“Have a seat,” I said to my guys. “Lieutenant, why don’t you give Mr. and Mrs. Murchison a quick rundown of where we are.”

Janet opened the file and gave a quick précis of the data, including the fact that the dead man’s Lincoln Town Car had been found two days before, abandoned in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city.”

“Have you any suspects, Lieutenant?” I said.

“The deceased was known for taking young men home with him,” she said, “and giving them cash and jewelry in exchange for sexual favors.”

Mrs. Murchison exploded in a lengthy tirade, the sum total of which was that her late brother could not possibly have been one of “those” kind of people, and once again, I let her rant until she ran out of breath.

“Mrs. Murchison,” I said, “I have in front of me interviews with no fewer than four young gay men, all of whom state that your late brother took them home for periods of time that varied from a weekend to a period of two weeks. In addition, we have interviews with the security guards at the entrance to his community confirming that a steady stream of young men called upon the late Mr. Jordan.”

“Humph,” she said. “I still don’t believe it.”

I pulled a sheet from the file, handed it to Mr. Murchison, and said, “Please read this.”

He read the document and looked a question at me, so I said, “It’s typical of the other interviews in the file. There are a lot of young gay men floating around the gay bars here in town who more or less earn extra money by letting themselves be taken home by older men. It’s not, strictly speaking, illegal, and there’s not a lot we can do about it.”

Having read the interview, he handed the document back to me.

I said, “Lieutenant, do we have any suspects?”

“We have dozens of fingerprints from the house,” she said, “not all of which can be matched with any known database. We’ve interviewed everyone whose prints were identified, and they all have confirmed alibis for the time of the murder. At the moment we’re concentrating on locating two men who were known to have gone home with the deceased at one time or another, both of whom have disappeared from the local scene.”

“What else, if anything,” I said, “can you tell us?”

“This case appears to be connected with a series of burglaries,” she said. “We have complaints from a half-dozen or so older gay men that their homes have been robbed. Most of them have admitted that they took one or more of these young men home with them at one time or another. Sergeant, do you have anything to add?”

“Our best working theory is that a couple of these guys, maybe even one or both of the two that have gone missing, would go home with an older man, check the premises out, and return later to rob him,” Carl said. “Mr. Jordan may have gone out for the evening, returned unexpectedly, and stumbled upon one of them in the midst of robbing him.”

“Humph,” Mrs. Murchison said. “I don’t believe it… I won’t believe it. My brother was many things, but he was not a homosexual.”

“Doriana,” her husband said, showing much more patience than she deserved, “I just read this interview, and the captain says there are many more. Besides, you and I both know that we’ve been hearing rumors about Sterling’s eccentricities for years.”

Now there’s a quaint euphemism for “queer.” Time to change the subject.

“Mrs. Murchison,” I said, “do you have a list of the items that were missing from your brother’s home? I see from the file that we don’t such a list as yet. We could use descriptions. Photographs would be even better.”

“I think Sterling’s insurance agent probably has that information,” she said.

“That would be wonderful,” I said, “particularly if any of the items had identifying marks. Small and highly valuable items eventually turn up in pawn shops, and we need to circulate a list as soon as we can.”

“I’ll have the insurance man call you tomorrow,” she said.

“Lieutenant Sanchez,” I said, “please give Mrs. Murchison your card so she can contact you directly.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, and handed each of the Murchisons a card.

A familiar figure had been hovering in my doorway through much of this, and he chose to make his entrance. “Howard,” the sheriff said, striding into the room. “I heard you were in the building. I hope Captain Martin has been taking care of you satisfactorily?”

“He certainly has, Walter,” Mr. Murchison said. “Unfortunately, some of the things he’s told us are not things that my wife wants to hear just now.”

“Humph,” Mrs. Murchison said. “I suppose all this nonsense about my brother will be all over the papers.”

This bitch is more worried about her reputation than her brother’s death
.

“Mrs. Murchison,” I said, “the department’s files are not exactly public records as such, nor are they sealed and private. We do our best to keep control of sensitive information, but people do talk, and we’re not always successful in containing things. Even if we succeed in protecting the information, there’s nothing to prevent a reporter from asking people the same questions we have and getting the same answers.”

“Why would they do that?” she said.

“Normally they wouldn’t, my dear,” the sheriff said, “but if you start raising too much of a fuss, rumors will circulate, and somebody is bound to start nosing around.”

“Oh,” she said.

That’s marginally better than “humph.”

“Captain Martin is one of the brightest people in this building,” the sheriff said, “and his people consistently have the highest record of success. If they are to solve this terrible crime, his people have to go where the evidence leads them, even if it leads them to some conclusions that you might find less than pleasant.”

He stroked her for a couple of minutes and finally led them from the room. Janet, Carl, and I all let out a sigh of relief, and Janet said, “I swear to God, boss, if that woman had said ‘humph’ one more time, I would’ve reached over and bitch-slapped her into next week.”

“I’m glad we don’t have to go through that with every case,” Carl said.

“You’ve got that right,” I said. “Thanks, guys, and keep me posted. I’ve got a feeling we haven’t heard the last of Mrs. Murchison.”

•
14 •

T
HE
sheriff came back to my office a few minutes after Janet and Carl left and asked to see the file. He read through a couple of the interviews and said, “I’m glad she didn’t want to read this stuff.”

 “Yes, Sir,” I said. “There are a lot of details in there that she doesn’t need to see, but her husband seemed to handle it well.”

“Yeah, and most of the time he handles her as best he can. I’ve never seen her quite like she was when I walked up to your door.”

“All I could think of to do was just sit there and take it until she ran down, which she finally did, just like she did the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Thirty seconds after she sat down in that chair, she took off like a rocket, or as they say… she went ballistic.”

He smiled at the image and said, “Do your guys have a chance at solving this?”

“There’s always a chance,” I said. “It hinges on tracking down our two missing suspects, or maybe we’ll get lucky with the pawn shops. It’s early days at this point.”

“I think maybe you’d better send me an occasional progress memo on this one, George,” he said. “Maybe I can deflect some of the heat with an occasional telephone call to Howard.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Before I left for the day, I sent a detailed memo to the sheriff and copied Chief Bridges. Later that evening, after Robbie was in bed, Mike and I were in the den as usual.

“We need to get to work on the new master suite,” I said.

“Where do we stand?”

“The plans I drew up have been approved by the relevant authority, and we have three estimates. I’ve almost come to the conclusion that we ought to act as our own contractor and subcontract most of the job out.”

“Why?”

“Because if we do it all ourselves, it will drag out for the rest of the year or longer. I don’t have as much free time as I did a couple of years ago when I re-roofed the house pretty much by myself—with you as my gofer. Not to mention the fact that the construction calls for removing part of the roof over our bedroom and Robbie’s bedroom, and one or two people can’t handle that in as timely a manner as a crew can. To put it bluntly, if it rained, we’d be up shit creek.”

Our original plan had been to construct a master suite over the garage, but it had grown considerably since then. We were now contemplating a master suite for Mike and me and a bedroom and bath for Robbie. The addition required a second story to be built over the garage and about a third of the house. Our new bedroom featured French doors opening onto a small screened-in porch above the backyard.

“No argument, babe,” he said. “Can the contingency fund handle it?”

“That’s another thing. I think maybe we’ve been keeping too much cash lying around in the fund.”

“Whoa. I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

When we first started seriously acquiring rental properties, I had always firmly insisted that we have an adequate cash reserve, which we called our contingency fund. The amount was tied to a formula—so much set aside for each property we owned.

“Hey. I’m man enough to admit it when I’m wrong, and in this case, I wasn’t really wrong… just overly cautious.”

“So,” he said, “do you think we can occupy our new suite by the time of the River Run?”

“That would be nice, but definitely not a realistic expectation.”

“Then go for it. Do some of the work, if you want, but hire the rest out. I’m looking forward to that sexy new shower.”

That decision having been made, we set things in motion the next morning, and by the end of the next week, workmen were swarming all over the house. Despite the considerable efforts of the various subcontractors and workmen to keep the house free of dust and sawdust, we literally choked on all of the above for several weeks.

As the construction dragged on, so did the robbery/murder case. One of the two prime suspects was located in Ft. Lauderdale and eventually provided an airtight alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the murder. At a staff meeting in late February, we were discussing the murder case and the related burglary cases.

“Janet,” I said, “you have a comprehensive list of the items missing from the Jordan home. Has anything turned up in the pawn shops?”

“Nothing that can be positively identified,” she said. “A couple of small sterling silver items have shown up that may be from the house, but we can’t be sure, and we’ve been unable to track down the persons who pawned them.”

“Let me guess, they used fake IDs and addresses.”

“Exactly.”

“There were a lot of valuable items on that list that are highly collectible,” I said. “Have you looked at eBay?”

“eBay?”

“It’s the ideal venue for selling collectible stuff anonymously.”

“Shit, Captain, none of us thought about that.”

“Well, now that you have, run with it.”

“You bet.”

“Remember this when you do—when you search for items for sale on eBay, you can also search for closed auctions.”

“What does that mean?”

“It refers to items of a like nature that have already been sold and the auctions have ended. With your computer research skills, you ought to be a natural at digging into eBay records.”